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Southern ThoughtsSouthern Thoughts   
A look at hot topics, news and information picked up in travels around the region.
 
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Risk Management for Sleeplessness

Posted on November 01, 2011
A farmer friend of mine told me recently that when you stretch yourself the numbers get you in the middle of the night. He takes the envelopes on which he writes those numbers into bed with him, so he can pick them up from the nightstand when doubts assail him.

As debt discussions swirl around Washington, D.C., our policymakers are making decisions that impact people's lives. They believe these decisions impact theirs too in that they could sway a voter in the next election. But that's no reason to make a morally corrupt decision.

There's no doubt that too many farmers work a 16-hour day and then can't sleep because something is going on with the crop, or they expanded into a new value-added business or a grain, peanut or cotton  broker is on the verge of collapse. The one thing that doesn't keep them awake at night is a decision made on poor moral grounds. It's something those who are elected to serve us in our national government would do well to remember.

When a nation is in crisis, we need leaders. We do not need politicians.

We need statesmen.

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About The Writer
Southern Thoughts

Pam Golden, editor of Southern Farmer magazine, has 25 years experience chronicling life in the south.

She served 11 years in daily newspapers and 3 years in weekly newspapers before being released for good behavior to the blessed world of agricultural journalism.

Pam’s agricultural journalism experience started as a freelance writer for Rural Press USA, while she still worked in daily newspapers. After five years, she became editor of Georgia Farmer magazine, waded through a series of changes and mergers in agricultural publishing, and now continues to work for the same parent company, Rural Press Ltd. of Australia, as an employee of its U.S. subsidiary, Farm Progress Cos., of Chicago. Rural Press was acquired by Fairfax Media in 2007.

Pam and her son, Russ, a freshman at Northwest Florida State College, live in Crestview, Fla. As editor of Southern Farmer, Pam writes about agriculture in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Pam earned her bachelor’s degree in communication arts with an emphasis on print journalism from the University of West Florida, Pensacola. She started her studies at Livingston University, now known as the University of West Alabama.